By Alexander Dziadosz CAIRO (Reuters) - The doctor who discovered a new SARS-like virus says it will probably trigger an epidemic at some point, but not necessarily in its current virulent form. The new strain of coronavirus (nCoV) that Ali Mohamed Zaki found last year, related to one that caused the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, has killed at least 18 people in the Middle East and Europe.

French health authorities said Friday they suspected a third person of being infected after coming into contact with a man confirmed to be suffering from a new SARS-like virus that has killed 18 people, mostly in Saudi Arabia. "We have a third suspected case this morning, a nurse from Douai" in northern France, the deputy director of the regional ARS health agency, Sandrine Segovia Kueny, told France Bleu Nord radio. A 65-year-old man is in intensive care in a hospital in Douai after being diagnosed with the novel coronavirus following a holiday in Dubai.

France's health ministry on Wednesday reported the country's first case of a new SARS-like virus that has so far killed 18 people, mostly in Saudi Arabia. A 65-year-old man who came back to France from a holiday in Dubai was diagnosed with the deadly novel coronavirus, and is in intensive care in a hospital in the northern city of Douai, the ministry said. "This is the first and only confirmed case in France to date," it added.

Five Saudis have died of a new SARS-like virus during the past few days and two more are being treated in an intensive care unit, the health ministry said. In a statement cited by the Saudi SPA agency late on Wednesday, the ministry said that all the deaths occurred in the Ahsaa province in the oil-rich eastern region of the kingdom. Known as novel coronavirus or hCoV-EMC, the virus was first detected in mid-2012 and is a cousin of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which triggered a scare 10 years ago when it erupted in east Asia, leaping to humans from animal hosts.